1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a clamping device comprising at least two clamping members which are provided with teeth on the gripping face while each of which, via a pressure area disposed at an angle with respect to the gripping face, cooperates with a pressure member capable of exerting a clamping force directed toward the gripping face.
2. Description of the Prior Art
This type of clamping device is known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,570,032; in this known device the intermediate members consist of two rings of balls spaced from one another. The drawback of this arrangement is that, due to inevitable deformations of the part which is clamped by the clamping members and which may be for example a support post of a platform, only an unpredictable portion of all of the teeth is in engagement and can break through corrosion spots if any, which results in too strong forces being exerted on this limited number of teeth. Consequently, in practice a large number of teeth is used on each clamping member, which then must be small and cannot break through a corrosion layer and individually take up a high load. As a result, this known clamping arrangement has turned out to be insufficiently reliable in practice.